The new era in modern lottery started in 1912 when “Totalizator” was legalized, making racetracks the only legal betting place in Canada. The Queensland State Lottery of Australia was the first lottery to start operations in the 20th century and from there on governments around the world start to consolidate lottery businesses, hereafter named as houses, as main stream of revenues. For example, portions of these revenues in United States were used to construct famous universities like Harvard, Yale and Brown in the United States and overall to support either federal or provincial community programs.
Lottery games are among the most successful games of chance. The reason stems from the intrinsic nature of the game. Lottery players know that they become millionaires upon hitting the jackpot. That is the biggest incentive for players to come back and play again and again even though the game has more drawbacks than benefits. Typically, lottery players are frustrated because of the low return of investment the game represents. Players' odds are extremely low (in the order of 10−7). For instance, a lottery 6/49 game, six numbers are drawn from a pool of 49 numbers. The total possible number of combinations, when the order of numbers is irrelevant, is given by the well-known combination rule: 49!/(6!×(49-6)!)=13,983,816. Therefore, if a player after purchasing of single entry received another two generated random numbers, the probability to hit the jackpot is=possible chances/all possible combinations, i.e. 3/13,983,816=2.1×10−7. This is probabilistic calculation of return on investment for players was described in prior art, U.S. Pat. No. 5,082,275. Despite of the fact that the former patent disclosed a high return on investment for players, in practice such low probability discouraged players and, overall, more frustration in players was created. Recognizing this limitation, U.S. Pat. No. 5,186,463 introduced several sublevels of cash rewards depending on the total matches corresponding to the winning number. For instance, a primary cash award was granted for a player who guessed all numbers, a secondary award was awarded for a player who guessed five out of six numbers, and so on and so forth. In addition, houses stipulate lotto rules encouraging players to buy more than a single lottery number and also to play multiple selections. The interest of players has grown and thus the ticket sales from houses. Players were motivated to play lottery games because of their odds were higher. However, the only opportunity for them to increase their odds was to buy more lottery entries. For instance, if the player decides to buy 10 entries ($2 dollars each) she/he needs to invest $20 dollars. However, players' odds remain practically unchanged. That is: (30(10×3)/13,983,816)=2.1×10^−6. That brought another unwanted effect; that of decreasing game popularity and to the detriment of the houses' sources of income. Lotto players were more likely to lose control of their expenses and go bankrupt, lose their jobs, friend and even families. On the other hand in people's mind was created an image that lottery was a “sick” source of revenue of governments. Numerous efforts have been undertaken in the past decades to change that image around. Today, most of houses have strict rules regarding gambling and encourage all players to play responsibly.
As part of these efforts a previous applications has introduced the concept of team play as a way to increase players' returns. The application described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,142,872, used the concept of team play for a game of chance conducted in slot machines. Players' odds increased while playing as a team and they were able to combine their success during the game segment to achieve better payouts at the end of the section. Another important step in the concept of team play was introduced by U.S. Pat. No. 6,416,408. Players start wagering as a group in a plurality of game levels. The team shared both successes and losses as the game progressed. The different levels of the game were interconnected such that rewards depended on whether the team succeeded in the previous level. Players felt more comfortable losing as a team rather than losing alone.
Technological advances in the mid 90's led to the introduction of HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP), HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and Domain Name System (DNS), a globally-extensive hyper-linked database referred to as the World Wide Web (WWW) that has quickly evolved as the infrastructure of the Internet. The challenges facing game of chances when played online were addressed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,659,861. The inclusion of internet opened a more convenient way for players to play lottery right from the comfort of their home (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,322,446; 6,383,078; and 6,869,067) while keeping the game regulated by governmental agencies. Other off-line scenarios for players wagering was disclosed by Walker et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,935,952. Another supplementary lottery game introduced by Walker et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 7,052,394 exploited the idea of the creation of groups of lottery tickets around one player. A player creates a group of lottery tickets registering those in what inventors called Theta-game'. Players might qualify for secondary awards, if the primary winning entries fail to win the jackpot and if any of its primary entries are under certain threshold with respect to the winning entry. However, in such cases the only option players have to increase their odds is buying more lottery entries at the same fixed price. In addition, a registration fee was applied to players to play the meta-game. Yet, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,780,514 by Walker, the mode of creating groups around a single lotto entry has not been exploited.
In all of the above publications, players are engaged in a ‘passive’ lotto game. That means players at authorized retailers (e.g., in person, over the telephone, or via the Internet) play the lottery in at least two different ways: 1) players pick a selection by mechanically scratching n-numbers in a poll of m-numbers for the price of k-value (e.g., from $1 up to $2) per entry; 2) players might select a ‘quick-pick’ and a random number is generated from an automated console and accredited to players. In any case, the players receive a confirmation ticket with the imprint of the selected play which includes two additional random entries per entry bought. Then, the players wait until the official winning number is advertised by the media or in internet in order to know whether or not the ticket purchased is the winning number.
It would be desirable to provide a novel lottery game, hereafter named “interactive lottery game”, which would increase players' return on investment and help players to overcome negative outcomes of lottery gambling. It would be also be desirable to provide an interactive lottery game which permits players to increase their odds while increasing house profitability.
The present disclosure recognizes the strong desirability of increasing player's odds in today's gambling industry, and addresses the need to attract and hold participants' interest through heightened the interactive and interactive lotto game. Accordingly, the present disclosure addresses the current need in the gaming industry for a manner of augmenting player's odds in lotteries by creating groups of player's wagering at least once cent of the cost of a single lotto entry. Thus, the present disclosure fulfills the aforementioned and other shortcomings of the prior art, and offer a variety of advantages over prior art gaming approaches.